Louise Hall

Simone Goldsmith remembers her older sister Alana as "a fun-loving vivacious and intelligent young woman, until anorexia nervosa starved her brain and destroyed her hopes and dreams".

Alana killed herself at Summer Hill railway station on July 22, 2011, after leaving a private hospital where she had been undergoing treatment for five days.

She was 23 years old.

At Glebe Coroner’s Court on Tuesday, Magistrate Mark Douglass found that Ms Goldsmith took her own life "while suffering anorexia nervosa".

Advertisement

It was a finding welcomed by the head of an eating disorders support foundation, who said it indicated how serious the illness was.

"It's crucial that we realise that this is an illness that kills," Christine Morgan, from the Butterfly Foundation, said outside court.

"It has the highest fatality rate of mental illness and we cannot ignore that."

A person with anorexia nervosa was 32 times more likely to take their own life than someone who does not have the illness, she said.

The coronial finding was significant because it "couples together the fact that the suicide risk is significantly heightened for somebody who is suffering from anorexia nervosa".

"It is not a lifestyle choice. It is a very serious mental illness."

Ms Goldsmith’s mother, Judy, asked Mr Douglass to make an order allowing the publication of her daughter’s name and cause of death, to help raise awareness about the devastating effects of eating disorders.

Mr Douglass made the order but he said he would not release his reasons for judgment or recommendations for two weeks.

"This has been a complex, harrowing matter with many difficulties," he said.

He extended his condolences to Ms Goldsmith’s family and particularly to her mother, "who has had to persevere on a daily basis with what has occurred to her own daughter", he said.

An eight-day inquest was held in April this year at the request of the Goldsmith family.

"For the last three years our hearts have been heavy without Alana enriching our lives," Simone Goldsmith said on Tuesday. "We have been on a traumatic rollercoaster of desperate grief, emptiness and seething rage."

She said she hoped the inquest will "bring about meaningful discussions amongst our health policymakers and lead to decisions that result in more resources and better care for the epidemic [of eating disorders] facing Australia".